Standing in front of a block of concrete, you rarely see straight away what it was for. These nine types cover almost everything still standing in the Netherlands. The counts are what this map knows of.
General term
Everything the data does not classify further. Usually a personnel bunker: a rectangular block with walls two metres thick and a gas-tight door, for ten to twenty men with bunk beds and a stove.
see them on the mapGerman and Dutch
Everything without a combat role: air-raid shelters in towns, splinter shelters at airfields, and the concrete pyramids of the Water Line that held a squad of twelve. Thin concrete, quickly built.
see them on the mapDutch, 1939 and 1940
Smaller and older than the German bunkers. Rectangular, with embrasures on the river side, sometimes a cast-steel cupola. Along the IJssel, the Meuse and the canals, not on the coast.
see them on the mapRemains
What is left: a half-demolished bunker, a foundation in the dunes, or a block that has slid off the dyke.
see them on the mapStorage
A low, half-buried room with a heavy door, right behind the gun. Often inside an earth bank, so that a direct hit would not take the rest of the position with it.
see them on the mapRingstand 58c
A round concrete pit with an open hole on top, for one man with a machine gun. All along the coast, often half buried in sand. The most-built German type.
see them on the mapRegelbau 612, 671
A wide opening facing the sea with a concrete roof jutting far forward. The gun stood inside and could only fire one way: across the beach.
see them on the mapFire control
The guns were directed from here. A narrow observation slit across the full width, range-finding equipment inside, and telephone cables to the bunkers around it.
see them on the mapAir surveillance
The base for a radar installation such as the Wassermann or the Freya. The apparatus stood on top, the crew worked below in the concrete.
see them on the mapNot every bunker is German. About half of what is on this map was built by the Dutch army, before and during the fighting of May 1940 and later in the Cold War.
| Line | Years | Built by | Where |
|---|---|---|---|
| Atlantic Wall | 1942 to 1945 | German | The coast, from Zeeland to the Wadden islands. Coastal batteries, radar stations and strongpoints around the ports. |
| New Dutch Water Line | 1815, reinforced 1939 | Dutch | From Muiden to the Biesbosch. Nineteenth-century forts, joined in 1939 by hundreds of casemates and shelters. |
| Grebbe Line | 1939 and 1940 | Dutch | From the Grebbeberg to the IJsselmeer. Three days of fighting here in May 1940. |
| IJssel Line | 1940 and 1951 to 1968 | Dutch | Casemates along the IJssel from 1940, and in the Cold War weirs and bunkers meant to flood the river inland. |
| Meuse Line and Peel-Raam Position | 1939 and 1940 | Dutch | Casemates along the Meuse and the Defence Canal in Brabant and Limburg. |